The Unexpressed

By Walt Whitman

How dare one say it?

After the cycles, poems, singers, plays,

Vaunted Ionia's, India's -Homer, Shakespeare -the long, long times, thick

dotted roads, areas,

The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars -Nature's pulses reaped,

All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration,

All ages' plummets dropped to their utmost depths,

All human lives, throats, wishes, brains -all experiences' utterance;

After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands,

Still something not yet told in poesy's voice or print -something lacking,

(Who knows? the best yet unexpressed and lacking.)